This evening, though, I walked across the lawn and it felt like fall. My nose and my chest and my throat and my sinuses all hurt from the conflict of the freezing cold air rushing in and combating the 98.6 inside. I wanted to explode. The renegade poetry adorning the construction wall around Rouss hall reminded me of another evening a year ago when the cold rushed life into my near-exploding chest. I was glad to be wearing a skirt tonight so that the cold could creep up inside � not in a sexual way, just in an everywhere way. It was only 7pm, but pitch dark outside � still, the warmth of the day hadn�t yet been completely swallowed by what turned into a freezing night. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to be riding my bike around the Patrick Henry High School track with Meredith. We would be riding just far enough away from each other that in the suddenly-early-darkness the other would be lost from sight at the dark end of the track. Then, after hours of blissful riding in circles we�d head to the corner of Brandon and Grandin � she�d turn up and I�d go straight and we�d be home before supper. It would be some time around the fifth grade and I would be shyer than I am now.
I do not like writing about Original Sin or The Fall � partly for capitalization reasons, partly because they�re confusing and upsetting concepts, and mostly because they kind of don�t exist in Judaism. Adam and Eve exist. The serpent exists. The tree of knowledge exists. It�s still more than a little confusing and upsetting and unfair-seeming in Judaism, but I don�t think it means exactly the same thing as it does in Christianity. I am continually afraid that some day I will get a paper back that says something along the line of, �Silly little Jew girl, that�s a completely incorrect theological interpretation. Zero points for you.� I tried to explain to Philip on the ride home from New York that, for me at least, knowing a lot about Judaism is as much a survival technique as it is anything else. I don�t think he exactly understood � which is fair, because there are days when I�m not sure I exactly understand either. But, at the same time, it�s frustrating to be faltering while writing a literature paper at five in the morning because you�re not sure you know enough about Jesus-y topics to proceeded. Oh Western literature � you foil me again!
This is, incidentally, where an entry about this past weekend�s trip to New York should go. We stayed in a hostel. We saw the opening weekend of Evil Dead The Musical at my coercion. It was pretty wonderful (both the trip and the musical). I wish I were better at actually recording important events via-journal.
What I am good at writing about is how October seems to be making me especially conscious of my nose. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it�s getting cold �which makes my nose very cold, and then I become very conscious of my nose. Secondly, it�s coming up on the anniversary of the time I let Greg and Paul talk me into watching Se7en and � you know � once a picture gets into my head, it never gets back out again. But, I�m better at dealing with the images than I was a year ago � they appear to want to pop up-all-the-time-forever, but I can handle that. Oh wimpy-brain, oh scary-movies, oh me.
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